Ratko Mladic had villagers ‘shot and burned in own home’

Elvedin Pasic told a UN war crimes tribunal of his family’s harrowing escape and separation as his village in northern Bosnia was shelled by troops in 1992.

Aged 14 at the time, he was forced to wander for weeks with his mother as he was turned away from village after village. He eventually returned home to be told by Serb soldiers, “There is nothing for you to go back to: your home is Turkey, this is Serbia”.

‘The house was burned completely, the fridge, the televisions, the walls – what was left of the walls was stripped,’ said Mr Pasic, now 34.

Even a stash of clothing they buried when they left had been found and taken.

His voice choked with tears as he described how he hoped to find his dog alive but found it shot where it was chained.

Most of the handful of people who had remained in his village – including an elderly religious man – were burned alive in their homes. One was shot.

Mr Pasic, the first witness in the long-awaited trial, is now expected to give details of how Serb forces kept men, women and children at a makeshift detention camp in a nearby school.

Mladic denies 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.

UN judges said the prosecution could respond today to a request by Mladic’s lawyers for a six-month adjournment.